“I wouldn’t trade it for anything,” Meadows, 74, said of the school. “Our teachers were like parents. They were about the whole person. They knew what we needed. I can remember all my teachers’ names because that’s how personal they were.”
Clayton County Public Schools is hoping to create a new memory of the school for Meadows: witnessing its restoration.
The building was designated a historic property by the Jonesboro City Council in 2022 and will become part museum and part community center when the work is completed, school district leaders said.
“We want to make sure that homeowners associations, retired educators, anybody with a small group who desires to meet and have their meeting in a nice environment will have the opportunity to do that right here in this building,” Clayton Schools Superintendent Anthony Smith said during a recent Wednesday groundbreaking ceremony for the restoration.
A new beginning
The district in February approved plans to spend $3.34 million to revitalize Jonesboro Colored in an effort to recognize its historical significance as one of the few remaining Rosenwald Schools left standing in Georgia.
Rosenwald Schools were a collaboration between Jewish philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, the president of retail giant Sears, and noted African American educator Booker T. Washington. The pair launched the schools in 1913 to improve access to education for Southern Blacks at a time when they were not admitted to schools with white students.
In all, some 5,000 Rosenwald Schools were opened through 1932 in 15 Southern states from Maryland to Texas. Many of the schools closed over the years after the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling paved the way for the nation’s classrooms to become desegregated.
More than 240 Rosenwald Schools were constructed in Georgia, and several have been restored or identified over the last 20 years, including Noble Hill School, now known as the Noble Hill-Wheeler Memorial Center in…
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